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Wednesday, May 27, 2015

A
god who does not condemn one’s sinful nature is not the God of Scripture. A god
who does not insist upon a standard, some plumb line to which he must hold those
who purport to serve and worship him is not the God of the Bible.

The
god of many today is a most inoffensive god, a god who is permissive of any and
all things, a god that eerily resembles the self, because there is no more
permissive a god than the god of self.

The
one true God is offensive to man’s sinful nature. Man’s sinful nature bristles,
rebels, and rejects the one true God because He demands a mortification of said
sinful nature, a doing away and parting of ways with what the flesh once
enjoyed and reveled in.

The
modern day church jumped the rails when it stopped preaching repentance, and it
has been hurtling towards a shattering impact ever since. Because we now preach
self rather than Christ, because we now preach personal growth rather than
spiritual growth, because our focus is squarely set upon the things of this
earth, we are as toothless lions, something for strangers to look at and try to
imagine in their prime. We pose no real threat to the enemy, we pose no real
danger to the darkness, but we’re fun to look at and make light of once in a while.

Righteousness
has ceased being our banner, obedience has stopped being our goal, and as such
we have become the devil’s footstool and a punchline for perverts and
pederasts. The lunacy of our self-destructiveness will be a tale told for as
long as the world turns, because no generation has wasted more potential, and
been altogether more ineffective as pertains to the kingdom of God than this
present generation.

We
have ways and means to reach the world in a heartbeat, we have ways and means
of getting the message of the cross to billions of souls, and instead we
elevate men who can barely string two words together because one of those words
happens to be prosperity.

Instead
of charging the gates of hell, we’re peaking over the wall hoping to see
something memorable, enamored with the idea that someone from the other side
may throw us a glance.

We’re
climbing all over ourselves to call any has been musician or never was actor an
honorary Christian simply for speaking the name Jesus in passing, as though
their mention of Him validates Him in any way.

What
wonderful news: the lead singer of the Idiot Savants said Jesus was a cool cat!
Now I can die happy.

We’ve
bought into the cultural relevance lie, and though it has proven itself
ineffectual time and again we’re still trying to find people to validate the
King of Kings, thereby hoping that some will be drawn to Him and begin to worship
Him.

It’s
not the power and the gifts of the Holy Spirit the church needs, it’s someone
with enough star power, someone truly famous to give Jesus the thumbs up. Once
that happens, boy, look out, you’ll have them stampeding the altars, and
fighting over who gets dunked first in the baptismal.

If
it were not so tragic it would be comical to an extent.

We
have betrayed our principles, abandoned our dignity, and sold out our Savior
all for the hope that some ignoramus on some reality show will give Jesus the
nod, even though he doesn’t subscribe to all that morality stuff, but just
thinks it would have been cool to have a beer with Him.

The
‘sin no more part’ has been
conveniently left out of ‘go and sin no
more’ because it might offend the sensibilities of some hedonist or
another, and we don’t want to exclude anyone from our big tent approach to God.

All
that stuff about the way being narrow and those who find it being few must have
been a mistranslation, and so we’re filling heaven to the rafters with men and
women whose garments are soiled and muddied, waiting for the wedding feast, not
bothering to acknowledge the reality that once the King arrives and finds them
without the proper wedding attire they will be bound and cast into the darkness
where there is but weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Friday, May 22, 2015

I’ve
known the world was on the brink for some time, but this became crystal clear
when I saw a girl with a selfie stick in a village in Romania, a village which
coincidentally had no running water or connection to the power grid.

Something
about that seemed so vulgar and out of place to me, that I realized it isn’t
just one geographical location that is sick. The world is sick and getting
sicker by the day.

A
generation of vapid hedonists is soon to enter adulthood, and the repercussions
of their inability to deal with the real world, the world where people do go hungry,
and people do get fired, and people do get evicted, and updating your Facebook
wall isn’t considered work, will be something to behold indeed.

When
you raise an entire generation on a consistent diet of stupid for eighteen
years, it’s no surprise that stupid is what they will end up being as they
photobomb their way into adulthood.

In
this upside down world we’ve created for ourselves, the cure for what ails us
as a species is seen as a hindrance to said species’ utopian dream, and so even
those who claim to serve Him distance themselves from His teachings, His
precepts, and His words.

Set
adrift on an ocean of our own self-importance we will no longer bend the knee,
we will no longer plead for mercy, we will no longer follow, we will no longer
obey. As such the likelihood of a positive outcome is less than zero, as is the
likelihood of a redress, or return to the straight path.

I
don’t know why but I’ve become more introspective and reflective of late, and
everything I see tells me this world is not long for itself. Something
astounding and of a breadth and scale heretofore unseen is set to descend upon
a largely unsuspecting world, and deservedly so.

Though
we might not see it with the naked eye, there is a running ticker. Someone is
keeping track, and eventually the bill will come due.

We
know to the very marrow of us that judgment is a foregone conclusion, and some
of the most loving, kindhearted, humble and merciful people I know have started
to pray for it. Forgiveness without repentance will never be, and as such the
only real reason to pray for an extension of grace and a putting off of judgment
is that handful of souls we may reach if we continue to be diligent and be
about our Father’s business.

The
hearts of men are growing colder and harder day by day, and to reach a soul
nowadays and truly see a life change which extends beyond the initial hand
waving at a crusade is a miracle on par with seeing the lame walk or the blind
see.

While
the church is busy doing other things like building denominational brands, and
making sure their leaders are cool enough to attract the youth they don’t seem
to be attracting even with their coolness, the one reason God has for delaying
judgment is not being carried out.

If
you’ve ever wondered what happens when the salt loses its flavor, the current
state of the world and where it is inevitably headed is pretty much it. The
state of the world is a direct result of the failure of the church, and the
failure to carry out its most sacred mission.

The
household of faith should be the rudder, it should be the compass, it should be
that one unshakeable presence that charts the course and follows through, and
by its very nature be a living embodiment of what it means to be saved. Instead
the church is what it is, its ambassadors are what they are, and all told it’s
no wonder the godless are having a field day mocking and ridiculing and merrily
pointing at our inconsistencies.

We
have men in positions of power and authority discovered to have done such obscene
things that the ‘no one is perfect’ cliché
is no longer applicable. When individuals who identify themselves as
ambassadors of the Kingdom and leaders of men are found to have been practicing
sins much of those in the world don’t even practice, it’s time to call it what
it is, and stop hiding under the ‘we’re
all sinners’ mantra.

The
point of being washed and made clean in the blood of Christ is to go and sin no
more, not to go back and rut in the mud from which we were extracted, cleansed,
and purified.

But
who wants to hear of such things nowadays?

It
would be much easier for me to tell you to love yourself, spout some drivel as
to how your inward thought determines your outer journey, and tell you how God’s
end game since before the beginning of creation was your prosperity, but I
still have a conscience, I’m still accountable to God, and I still love you
enough to tell you the truth.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Some
tend to believe God’s only means of judging His creation and doing so in
righteousness is via bombastic events that cause the world to pause and take a
breath, and makes man realize the utter insignificance of his existence here on
earth.

When
we think of God’s judgment we tend to gravitate more towards the earthquake
which just devastated Nepal than we do about what is happening in America
momentarily.

What
many fail to realize is that not all of God’s judgments are the same. Yes,
there are certain times wherein the judgment of God is like a thunderclap in
the silence, but there are also subtler judgments, some we might not even
consider or acknowledge as such.

One
of the most devastating of God’s judgments and one I have witnessed time and
again is that of leaving man to his own devices, machinations, and destructive
tendencies. God doesn’t need to throw lightning bolts at most folks to visit
judgment upon them; all He needs to do is leave them to do as they will, and
that’s judgment enough.

With
the removal of light, the mind becomes darkened. Once the mind becomes darkened
the choices we make and actions we take become so antithetical to our own
self-interests it would make a schizophrenic do a double take.

Reason
packs its bags and goes off on a long vacation, common sense has long since
left the building, and all we have left is blind rage, anger at anyone and
everyone, all because it’s far easier finding someone else to blame for our bad
choices and poor decisions than it is to own up to the fact that we are
directly responsible for where we find ourselves at any given moment in life.

We
look upon the whole of humanity today and realize a vast swath of it is much
like the Nebuchadnezzar of old sans the grass eating and sleeping out in the
woods. Madness has overtaken men and women of all ages, social standing, and aptitudes,
so much so that their singular purpose in life is their gut and their groin.

Hedonism
has become the religion of the day, and for the sake of convenience thousands
of innocents are slaughtered upon its altars daily, while the gullible and
easily culled swallow the ‘choice’ pill as though it has become acceptable in
the eyes of both God and men to choose murder on a whim, or because bringing a
life into the world would conflict with your plans for the summer.

We
are witnessing the beginning of the end, and most of us don’t even know it.
What is left but judgment when the whole of man has become but brute beasts who
no longer know the meaning of dignity, humanity, or holiness, and whose only
god is the reflection staring back at them in the mirror?

Even
those who have for long and long cried ‘mercy’ are grudgingly beginning to
acknowledge that God’s judgment is justified, deserved, and necessary.